England’s casual approach with the bat came under the scanner after a morning stumble at Headingley, but to focus the scrutiny on their approach is to miss the wider points at play, writes Yas Rana.
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In more ways than one, it was a day that summed up the 2023 Ashes. It started in the balance. England provided the majority of the entertainment. Australia threatened to pull out of sight. And at the end, England were somehow still hanging on.
It could have been so much worse. England’s post-lunch blitz almost took them to parity just when their Ashes hopes threatened to fizzle out without much resistance.
When Chris Woakes wafted at a short ball on the stroke of lunch, the knives were out. The post-mortem was ready to start before the time of death had been called. After one of England’s slowest scoring sessions with the bat in the Bazball era, their aggression was once more under the scanner. They were the architects of their own downfall.
It’s human nature to start pointing fingers, blaming decision-making instead of more macro contributing factors that are harder to fix. Chastising millennials’ taste for £3 coffees as they struggle to get on the property ladder is easier than pointing to a decades-long reluctance to build more houses. It’s easy to point out the flaw in front of you, but that ‘flaw’ might not be the one that matters most. It’s easier to buy fewer coffees than undo years of neglect, but it doesn’t mean you’ll suddenly be able to afford a semi in Hounslow.
It’s a bit like blaming England’s series predicament on their aggression with the bat. Some shots – like Moeen Ali’s airy pull with two men in the deep – are hard to defend, but otherwise, today was generally a case of poor execution rather than a poor shot selection. Joe Root’s dismissal off the second ball of the day is probably the most common of his career, fending a Pat Cummins delivery just outside off stump that rears off a length. Jonny Bairstow’s demise wasn’t pretty but this is where wicket discourse often falls short – it was a poor shot, but it was poor in execution not in the decision to play it. It was a half volley, and it deserved to be put away.
Even Woakes’ waft had logic behind it. Regarded as a weak player of the short ball, Australia’s tactics to the No.8 were not subtle. His options were to dig in and withstand the short-ball barrage – a philosophy that brought Australia 126-8 at Lord’s – or hit them into a change of plan. It was a strategy that helped Mark Wood to England’s third highest score of the innings from No.9 after the interval.
The shot to rival Moeen’s for worst of the day was the one that brought the all-rounder his first wicket of the Test. Marnus Labuschagne’s sweep off Moeen straight to deep mid-wicket showed that no matter the philosophy, players will play bad shots. You cannot ‘think’ bad shots out of the game.
Despite England’s excellent evening session with the ball, Australia are one more good day’s play away from making it 3-0 and sealing the series. But they are not in this position because of England’s brashness with the bat; they are in this position because they have better and more consistent cricketers.
This isn’t to absolve England of all blame; their pre-series preparation was casual. While golf might help the players unwind and enter the series without inhibition, it doesn’t help you improve your slip catching, and Ollie Robinson and James Anderson both admitted to being undercooked at Edgbaston. The decision to drop Ben Foakes is looking increasingly decisive. Bairstow is averaging more than one missed chance per innings this series, with the margins so fine that that matters.
But the bottom line is that the Australia team is just better. In the series’ leading run-scorer Usman Khawaja, they have the opener the highest average of any in the game’s history. They have three other players in the top 10 of the world batting rankings. Their batter under most scrutiny averages 45 in Test cricket, while their bowling stocks are so strong they can afford to rotate Josh Hazlewood out of the side.
England, on the other hand, are full of players yet to really prove themselves. Their form opener is in his first full year of Test cricket while the other averages 28 in his 37th Test. They have a rookie in at three, and a guy at seven who’s not passed 60 in his last 23 Tests. And 11 years into Bairstow’s Test career they’ve still not really worked out how to get the best out of him. That’s not to mention the injuries that have plagued England both before and during the series, depriving them of their lead spinner, their vice-captain and any genuine pace until the series was on the line in the third Test.
It is genuinely impressive that they’ve gone toe-to-toe with Australia through the series so far. If England don’t turn this series around, it will have been over a decade between Ashes victories by the time they land in Australia in the 2025/26 winter. If they lose at Headingley or Old Trafford, they wouldn’t even have got to a fifth Ashes Test with the urn up for grabs since then. There is a disparity in the production of Test-ready cricketers, the clues for which can be found in the damning ICEC report.
English cricket is embarrassingly reliant on private schools and a near two-decade gap between Tests on free-to-air television must surely have an impact on the game’s ability to draw in potential players. Like the housing crisis, it’s years of background neglect that provides the root cause for England’s Ashes inferiority.
In 2019, England were thrashed twice and relied on the greatest innings in the game’s history to secure one of their two wins. They were lucky to get the nil in their 4-0 defeat in 2021/22. This time, they’re still just about in the contest and unfortunate not to be at least level. To pin the blame on the broad approach is backwards – it’s the only thing giving them a chance.
